A long career comes to an end

Submitted by editor on Thu, 05/02/2013 - 3:55pm

George Maxa first joined The New Prague Times staff in 1949. After serving in the military for several years in the early 1950s, he returned to New Prague and rejoined The Times staff in 1954. He has been an important part of this newspaper since that time.

A story several years ago, told about the many changes in his career as a typesetter. Over the past 59 years he went from setting hot lead type to photo-typsetting to desktop publishing on a Macintosh computer. He was inducted into the Minnesota Newspaper Association’s Half-Century Club.

Besides his job as a typesetter, George was also a sports reporter for many years. Since the early 1980s, he has been the paper’s D-R-S baseball correspondent, spending many hours on the phone with managers and scorekeepers to keep our readers up-to-date about the league.

When he retired in the 1990s, George continued as a part-time employee doing some typesetting and each summer writing the weekly D-R-S reports. He also was the official scorekeeper and public address announcer for the New Prague Orioles. In 2010, the team honored George for his many years of service to amateur baseball and the Orioles with a plaque that hangs near the concession stand at the Memorial Field ballpark.

Last fall, George told publisher Chuck Wann that he would no longer be writing the D-R-S stories, and earlier this year, he decided to end his employment with The Times.

This is the first issue without George as part of the staff. We at The Times are going to miss him, and we are sure that local amateur baseball fans will as well.

“I really enjoy the game of baseball,” George said by phone earlier this week. “I’m going to miss covering all the games, but I’m sure I’ll try to get to a few games this summer.”

The Times staff will miss George, especially his sense of humor. He said he would also try to stop by the office once in awhile. We will look forward to those visits, because he always has some good jokes to share.